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More => Old Versions => JRiver Media Center 31 for Windows => Topic started by: ferrarabrainpan on May 14, 2023, 07:08:05 pm

Title: A question about MC31 and Windows 10
Post by: ferrarabrainpan on May 14, 2023, 07:08:05 pm
This is a minor occurrence, not even a problem really, but maybe someone can explain.

Sometimes when I'm playing music with MC31 (and all previous versions I've used) on my Windows 10 PC, with the display showing current library view and playback info, I will notice that the mouse pointer on the screen turns into a blue arrow circle (like when an application is loading in Windows) and the taskbar which is set to always appear disappears, for about 5 or 10 seconds, and then reappears and the blue circle goes away. There is no interruption in playback whatsoever. This happens often enough when I'm playing music, and no other app is running, all browsers are closed, file explorer windows are closed, etc. Of course there are other processes running in the background, but JRiver is the only program open and running at the time.

I'm guessing this might be a background Windows process that causes this momentary interruption in the display, but I searched in Windows Event Viewer for any events that occurred at the exact time this display anomaly happened, and found nothing. So I am wondering if it is an incident of JRiver periodically automatically checking for updates to the program which causes this? If so, where can I adjust the setting within MC31 to make it only check for updates on startup and not during general use? As I said, there is no interruption or audible issues of the playback, only those visible signs I've described.

Everything else is fine, I've been using MC31 after upgrading from MC30 three days ago and it's running smoothly. Also glad to report they added the feature request I made last year for a Toggle List View button in the custom toolbar options.
Title: Re: A question about MC31 and Windows 10
Post by: JimH on May 15, 2023, 12:59:33 am
Something may be slowing down file access.  Antivirus?

Make sure you configure Windows Defender.
Title: Re: A question about MC31 and Windows 10
Post by: ferrarabrainpan on May 15, 2023, 10:50:01 am
Something may be slowing down file access.  Antivirus?

Make sure you configure Windows Defender.

Windows Defender is on but I am not sure what settings I might adjust to regulate this issue. Avast Free Antivirus is my main security app.
Title: Re: A question about MC31 and Windows 10
Post by: JimH on May 15, 2023, 10:52:18 am
Windows Defender is on but I am not sure what settings I might adjust to regulate this issue. Avast Free Antivirus is my main security app.
There's a good chance that it's Avast.  Uninstalling is the only way to know. 

Windows Defender is excellent and is, by itself, sufficient.

https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,114101.0.html
Title: Re: A question about MC31 and Windows 10
Post by: varian93 on May 28, 2023, 05:06:24 am
I too used to frequently experience this issue and have isolated, at least one, thing that causes it. I supposed there may be more.

In my experience it always happens when JRiver is waiting for data from a disk. It used to happen on nearly every playback when I had my settings at "Audio, Settings, Memory Playback" set to anything other than "no memory playback."

All of my media files are stored on a rather slow NAS, which is fast enough to keep up decoding the file on the fly, but too slow to load the whole file into memory before beginning playback.

It's likely anything that causes JRiver to have to wait before it can begin playback.
Title: Re: A question about MC31 and Windows 10
Post by: ferrarabrainpan on May 28, 2023, 09:59:34 am
I too used to frequently experience this issue and have isolated, at least one, thing that causes it. I supposed there may be more.

In my experience it always happens when JRiver is waiting for data from a disk. It used to happen on nearly every playback when I had my settings at "Audio, Settings, Memory Playback" set to anything other than "no memory playback."

All of my media files are stored on a rather slow NAS, which is fast enough to keep up decoding the file on the fly, but too slow to load the whole file into memory before beginning playback.

It's likely anything that causes JRiver to have to wait before it can begin playback.

I was going to try your suggestion but my settings were already on No Memory Playback (by default, I guess, since I never changed that setting). Thanks anyway. Must be something else at fault here. Not losing sleep over it in any case...
Title: Re: A question about MC31 and Windows 10
Post by: EnglishTiger on May 28, 2023, 10:09:28 am
Seeing the occasonal momentary rotating blue bircle when MC is running can sometimes be because a background Task, like Auto-Import or Building Thumbnails is doing something.
Title: Re: A question about MC31 and Windows 10
Post by: ferrarabrainpan on May 28, 2023, 10:25:49 am
Seeing the occasonal momentary rotating blue bircle when MC is running can sometimes be because a background Task, like Auto-Import or Building Thumbnails is doing something.

Possibility, yes. I unchecked the box for 'Run auto-import in background' and will see. I added a top menu button for 'Run auto-import now' and I always manually click that whenever I've added new files or edited tags or names of existing files or folders, so there is no need to have it running in the background in my case. As for Building Thumbnails, I don't know...
Title: Re: A question about MC31 and Windows 10
Post by: JimH on May 28, 2023, 10:40:59 am
It can also mean that disk access is slow for some reason.
Title: Re: A question about MC31 and Windows 10
Post by: ferrarabrainpan on April 16, 2024, 07:31:41 pm
I finally figured out the cause of this issue. One day I experienced a playback hiccup that was apparently due to Windows downloading OS updates automatically (even though I always set Windows Update to OFF for 'get the latest updates as soon as they're available'). Since then, I've made a habit of always having Update set to "Pause updates for seven days" (unpausing it when I want to check for updates). I haven't experienced the issue described in my first post above since doing that.